What Passes for Masculinity is Stupid

It seems, because of your self-awareness, that any kids you might have might be spared the same fate. Kudos.

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I real man wouldn’t ask that question.
:wink:
Sure, defining what is right can be a bitch BUT, more often than not, it is straightforward and while the “devil” may be in the “details”, that doesn’t keep us for know that there IS a right ( even if we may debate what IS right).

Thanks. We have 2 boys and my wife and I very self-aware of how we were raised. Both trying to break that cycle and not pass on certain traits. Helps that we moved 500miles away from where we grew up lol. Doing our best to raise a couple of Renaissance Men.

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True. It would save the world a lot of trouble if more people spent a little time trying to decide what their definition of “right” was. A little understanding could go a long way.

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As someone who has spent the better part of the last twenty years of my career working with college students, professionals, and community members on a variety of social issues - including issues related to masculinity - I truly appreciate what you have written here, TC. This piece is really well done. Appreciate the time you’ve taken to offer important and thought-provoking ideas on a complex topic.

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The Atomic Dog is back. Good article TC and this part: It’s funny, a segment of society still regards women as the emotional sex, but that’s only true if you exclude anger as an emotion.
was very insightful, at least to me.

Thanks! It’s a topic that’s important to me.

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Well, sort of. Maybe without the meanderings into stuff that caused my co-workers to shake their heads. Thanks!

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Let’s call a spade a spade. He hasn’t picked up a rifle. He is living in a bunker far away from the front forcibly conscripting tens of thousands of young Ukrainian young men to serve as human hamburger meat and cannon fodder for overwhelmingly superior Russian artillery. Have you seen the videos of what the battlefields look like after the Russian shelling? The human carnage is horrific beyond words. I love TC’s work and have been a huge fan for over 20 years, but Zelensky should have known that propagating a civil war in the Donbass since 2014, killing thousands of Russian speaking civilians, and then inviting NATO into Russia’s doorstep and rubbing their nose in it would provoke the bear. His ego won’t allow him to admit his mistakes, and negotiate peace when he had the chance. What’s sickening is he will eventually escape to some fancy villa in the West to live in luxury while so many thousands who would have had to chance to live their lives out will not have that chance. (No I am not remotely Russian or a Putin stooge…just disgusted by the killing and maiming that could have been averted).

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by Russia.

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In the US we call those high rise apartment buildings full of civilians, but Im gonna chalk this misunderstanding up to language barrier.

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You must not be following the news. Ukraine is winning this war. Your prediction that he will escape to a villa in the west is somewhat dated. He may not take back all of the original Ukrainian territory, but Zelensky is going to stay in power in Kyiv.

I’m not really sure what to make of Zelensky as a person, but he stayed and fought when it counted. No, he didn’t actually pick up a rifle and go to the front. But when Western media said Kyiv was going to fall in 96 hours, Putin said he was going to find and kill him, Russian assassins were hunting for him, and European and US leaders offered him exfiltration, he stayed.

It’s easy to look in hindsight and claim he was hiding in a bunker. But that’s fairly revisionist when you look at the information he had at the end of February.

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Okay, let’s do that. Do you see Biden picking up an AR-15 in the event the US is attacked?

Maybe Kamala Harris will pick one up and try to time her shots between her giggle-fits.

Or perhaps Pelosi will get strapped up?


You’ve missed the point of my post, which was specifically ignoring his politics and giving props to a politician actually having a pair of balls. Most of the time people in his position would just force people like me and my crayon-eating brothers to go fight while they’re busy campaigning for their next election.

I could give a fuck if he staged that video or not. Most elected US official scum think guns are only for second class citizens like us to use when protecting them.

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Well if they media said that the “Our side, aka Ukraine is winning” who am I disbelieve them after all that is what they told us in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan… In seriousness, I do follow independent news sourced from the ground on a daily basis and it is very grim for Ukraine. They are heavily heavily outgunned. I get what you are saying about the beginning of the war being a sobering punch to the face of Russia but (and assassins are just part of the scenery in that part of the world, witness what just happened in Moscow) the Russian military and people are not going to quit on this existential threat (NATO) on their doorstep. The stakes are very different than the Russo/Afghan war that the Soviets ended up quitting on. I grew up a Cold War rabid Russia hater like practically everyone else in the US back in 70’s and 80’s but I can now look past that emotion and acknowledge the cold hard facts as I see them not as I want them to be. I respect the fact that you and others have a different view of the facts; I am only giving my (apparently different) view. BTW, well said with regards to US politicians…you may hate the Russian Generals but at least they have the balls to go the front, put themselves in danger, and get killed. I wish I could say the same thing for our American generals.

My opinion of this is not formed based on the US or western media. I am fluent in Russian, have many Russian friends, and spent several years living in Russia. It’s quite clear even from the Russian reporting that things are not going well for the Russian military.

I completely agree that if faced with an existential threat the Russian people would absolutely be a force to be reckoned with. This is why it would be foolish for the US to get directly involved or try to invade Russia. But the reality is that many, many Russians see through the existential threat malarkey that Putin is trying to pull. I’m increasingly optimistic that Putin won’t survive this.

I also don’t understand the double standard that you are putting forth when putting the blame for this war on Zelensky and Ukraine. How can you possibly believe that Putin is justified to wage a full out offensive invasion of his neighbor based on his cold-war era, megalomaniacal paranoia while at the same time thinking it’s out of bounds for Zelensky to consider alliances with the west? I have no idea how an objective, neutral standard can support that conclusion.

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Is it TC or PC, this web site helped me learn and grow from a lifter that knew nothing into one that has multiple state and National records.

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Thanks for letting us know, and on behalf of everybody here, congrats!

Maybe irrelevant on a grander scale but the older I get, one of the things I respect most in a man is when I see someone who is just completely themselves and not the social constructs he surrounds himself with. I know plenty of guys that provide, protect, etc, but if they laugh at some shitty joke to fit in, or carry themselves in a way that is exactly the same as all of the people around them, I can’t help but see them as having little masculinity. There are of course situations where we must act a certain way, and that is social intelligence, but you guys know what I’m talking about.

Not the “become what we surround ourselves with” stuff, which can actually be great in the correct circumstances. I’m talking losing themselves completely to fit in. The more I develop myself within, the easier it gets to segregate myself from certain behaviors and the more comfortable I feel as a man in my own skin. This is a wide spectrum I’m trying to describe but there is definitely a feeling I get within me when I see it.

There are people who become too contrarian for the sake of it in the other direction which is perhaps even worse at times but that’s a different story.

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I think your characterization of “an offensive invasion of a neighbor” is simplistic and misleading. There has been a civil war in the Donbass raging since 2014 with thousands of lives lost. Google it. Even now most of the close quarters infantry vs infantry fighting is between Ukrainian National forces and Donbass militia (aka, other Ukrainians). This situation is further complicated by the fact that this is now a hot proxy war between NATO and Russia… I don’t “blame” any specific person; wars, particularly civil wars, are complicated.

I’m an old-stock American and I don’t have a dog in this fight but in my opinion in the long run the Ukraine has next to no chance of “winning” in the sense of taking back control of the Donbass. Therefore, I think that Zelensky’s unwillingness to negotiate a peace settlement is needlessly throwing away thousands upon thousands of lives. I see him as a stooge of Western governments who blithely goad him to “fight to the Ukrainian” all the while shipping him tons of armaments with borrowed taxpayer money that lines the pockets of the military industrial complex, the political elite (i.e. the Ukraine has been a corrupt Western grift for years, witness Biden and Romneys sons, etc.) and ultimately Zelensky himself.

Since you seem to think otherwise in terms of the outcome of this war, I can honestly see how you could frame Zelensky as a defending hero of his country. On this point we are at an impasse. Time will tell who was right. I am merely explaining my point of view since you seemed so incredulous that somebody could have a different one than the media narrative.

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